People often obtain information by using computing devices to submit queries to search engines. The most common form of search query is a keyword query. A keyword query is a query formed of one or more keywords, where the keywords generally reflect the subject about which the searcher desires to obtain information. For example, a searcher interested in who invented hydrogen peroxide may submit the keyword query “hydrogen peroxide inventor” to a search engine.
Long keyword search queries can be formulated relatively quickly by users with good typing skills and a full sized keyboard. However, the weaker the typing skills, and the more cumbersome the user input mechanism, the more difficult it becomes to formulate long keyword queries. For example, when using small touch-screen interfaces that are prevalent on handheld devices, formulating a keyword query such as “hydrogen peroxide inventor” may be a painful and error-prone experience.
To facilitate the formulation of keyword queries, some search engines attempt to guess at what the finished query while the user is still typing the query. For example, if the user has entered the letters “hydrog” the search engine may suggest the query “hydrogen”. If the search engine correctly guesses the query that the user is in the process of typing, then the user may simply select the query suggestion to cause the selected query to be submitted to the search engine.
While suggested queries can significantly reduce the amount of user input required to formulate a query, suggested queries only do so when the search engine accurately guesses the user's intent. Typically, the only clue to the user's intent is the partially-formulated query that the user has typed in thus far. In many cases, the partially-formulated query is insufficient to accurately guess the search intent of the user. For example, based on “hydrog” the search engine may suggest “hydrogen”. As the user types in more characters (e.g. “hydrogen p”), the search engine may even suggest “hydrogen peroxide”. However, it is highly unlikely that the search engine will suggest “hydrogen peroxide inventor” until the user has typed in nearly the entire query (e.g. “hydrogen peroxide inv”).
Based on the foregoing, it is clearly desirable to facilitate searches by reducing the number of input actions required to formulate a search query.
The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.